Compulsory cold turkey

The Prime Minister's senior drug adviser has proposed new laws that would allow drug addicts to be detained against their will and forced to dry out.

Major Brian Watters, chairman of the Australian National Council on Drugs, yesterday said families should be able to seek help for children and relatives whose drug addictions were out of control.

"I would expect it should be a similar process (to) that (which) is being used in the mental hospital where a person can be put into protective custody and able to undergo treatment in a facility that they can't walk out of," he said. "There's a popular belief that you can't help somebody unless they really want to be helped. But the truth is almost every serious drug addict I've ever spoken to has said they'd like to stop."

Major Watters said the idea to force drug addicts to be locked up to undergo treatment was sparked when he had a phone call from a distraught mother whose drug-addicted daughter was constantly in and out of hospital with disease and overdoses. "The mother pleaded with me, 'Isn't there some way we can make her go to treatment?'," he said. "And I believe there should be."

Major Watters said addicts were incapable of making the decision to dry out but if it was forced on them lives would be saved. "This is not an uncompassionate suggestion," he said. "It's trying to help people and save people's lives." ");document.write("

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Victorian drug user support group Vivaids yesterday opposed the scheme, which Major Watters has already proposed to Justice Minister Chris Ellison.

Vivaids manager Jill Meade said there was no evidence that forcing people to have treatment was any more effective than not forcing them, and that people often reacted negatively when forced to do something.

"This is about forcing people to have treatment and people have treatment choices and people have rights," she said.

Senator Ellison said last night that he believed diversionary programs, which oblige defendants in drug-related criminal cases to choose treatment or punishment, already offered a measure of compulsion.

But the Commonwealth did not have the jurisdiction to enact laws for the compulsory detention and treatment of drug users generally, he said.

Major Watters said he would be happy to discuss the idea with Mr Howard and hoped Senator Ellison would raise it with the Government. "I would hope that somewhere along the line we might be able to overcome this idea that you're imposing on people's civil rights, you're uncompassionate and you're trying to take a hard line, because no one would say that if you're dealing with a seriously mentally ill person," he said.

Labor justice spokesman Daryl Melham slammed Major Watters' idea, saying it was counterproductive and would threaten the hard-won gains in Australian public health. "This simplistic approach just won't work . . . Major Watters is trapped in a policy time warp," he said.

Mr Melham said the United Nations' HIV/AIDS program had condemned countries such as China for locking up drug users.

"Not only does Major Watters' idea make a mockery of our international obligations to respect human rights, it also does not make any sense," he said.